The Goldfinch

A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

By: Donna Tartt

Narrated by: David Pittu

A young New Yorker grieving his mother's death is pulled into a gritty underworld of art and wealth in this “extraordinary” and beloved novel that "connects with the heart as well as the mind" (Stephen King, New York Times Book Review), named a New York Times Best Book of the 21st Century.

Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by a longing for his mother, he clings to the one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into a wealthy and insular art community.

As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love — and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a mesmerizing, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention. From the streets of New York to the dark corners of the art underworld, this "soaring masterpiece" examines the devastating impact of grief and the ruthless machinations of fate (Ron Charles, Washington Post).

Thoroughly enjoyed story and narration

I was a little unsure about downloading this because I read some negative reviews of the narration but I'm happy to say I couldn't disagree more. I loved the the voices Pittu chose for the characters and how the intonations and rhythms distinguished each one. In fact, I'm intending to search out other books that he's narrated as well as other books by Ms. Tartt. I particularly loved the voices of Boris and Hobie, because I found each so endearing and amusing. Also, some people have complained about the length of the story but I love a good long listen (more for the money!), and this was certainly entertaining throughout. The only thing that was a slight disappointment was that I often saw things coming before they happened, but likely that was intentional foreshadowing on the author's part.

A wonderful, involved,detailed narrative

I am into the second of the 5 Audible 'chapters' of this book and am fascinated by the authors intricate storytelling as well as the narrators ability with different voices.

We all know a narrator can make or break a novel. David Pittu has met this challenge wonderfully. He reads the novel, one that is full of details and different people, with glory and imagination.

This is my first Donna Tartt book and I'm sure I'll be listening to her other novels, if this is typical of her. I love long novels, and also enjoy novels with lots of personal information about the characters. Donna Tartt supplies these with the same enthusiasm as Rosamund Pilcher or Diana Galbendon do in their novels, though this is a totally different type of story as either of the mentioned authors write, the feelings brought forth in their stories are full of details that truly flesh out the primary characters thoughts, feelings and views.

I've read many of the Amazon reviews and mentioned so frequently is the length, the length,the length of the novel.
SO What!! It's a long book..it took Tartt 7 years to give birth to the book and develop the story. Shes not a brief writer, apparently, I say "Good For Her."

The great thing about Audible is we can listen anytime, in the car, doing housework, walking the dog..or as I am this evening at 9PM. Not involved in some inane reality TV program. Instead I have the unmitigated pleasure of listening to a wonderful book that lets me use my imagination to view the scene that Tartt write with such ability.

Well worth your credit!

Couldn't put it down, couldn't wait for it to end!

A riveting story but ultimately interminable and cloying. By the last few hours I was really wishing that Theo would OD or anything just to make him shut up! If it had been half as long it would have been a great story. Perfect narrator, too bad he had to play an amoral professional victim who overthinks everything to death. I'm glad I stuck it out, but I think this book is somewhat over-rated.

What if.....

I tried reading Donna Tartt's previous books and couldn't get into them. Perhaps I will try the audios. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this book- I will admit that it could have benefitted from a better editor. However, I did not not get bored. I found myself immersed in the story and I really enjoyed living in Theodores crazy world.I thought the narrator was excellent. I won't go into the story since there are so many reviews, and yes it was a bit far fetched in many instances, but that is what fiction is about. To take us to another world, another life and let us imagine the "what if's...."

Sumptuous if overstuffed coming-of-age

At the center of The Goldfinch is a painting by the 17th century master, Fabritius, whose life was cut short when a nearby gunpowder magazine exploded. When 13-year-old Theo Decker and his mother duck into a NYC art gallery to view this and other pieces, another explosion ends Theo's mother's life. In the disorienting confusion that follows, a dying, delirious old man pushes The Goldfinch on Theo, who stumbles out with it in a bag. Over the next decade, Theo's new acquisition, which is now on the FBI’s unsolved art theft list, becomes a defining part of his life.

The parallel between the two explosions, of course, is intentional. Over its 700+ pages, this sometimes brilliant, sometimes frustrating bildungsroman contemplates the intermingled roles of catastrophe and fortune in shaping human experience and its meaning. Is bad necessary to create good in the world? Are beauty and pain ever separable? This one finds the answers no less elusive than other novels, but perhaps there are glimpses of them in the more memorable passages and characters.

Readers have noted the similarities to Dickens. Like David Copperfield, young Theo is shuffled around between various institutional figures, reluctant caretakers, kindly benefactors, and friends of varying quality, before eventually growing up and finding his own path. He spends time with a wan grade school friend and his dysfunctional Upper East Side family. His sketchy, alcoholic father, who walked out on the family a few years ago, makes a reappearance, with a brassy, too-tanned girlfriend in tow. There’s a middle-aged restorer of antique furniture who becomes Theo’s mentor. And there’s Boris, a worldly, fearless, Artful Dodger of a Ukrainian teenager who becomes young Theo’s new best friend, though not always to the latter’s benefit, and is my favorite part of the novel. Like Dickens, Tartt makes her narrator a little unreliable, though she doesn't go for Dickens's sentimentality.

Tartt is, no question, a marvelous writer. Her central characters, particularly Boris, burst with personality, and many scenes unfold in delicious visual detail, like a carefully-wrapped package slowly being unwrapped. Her sense of place, from a cramped, dusty furniture store in downtown NYC to the arid emptiness of a semi-abandoned Las Vegas housing development, can be fantastic. She describes the torments of unrequited love with excruciating trueness, and can make a scene as tawdry as two teenagers on a basement drug binge feel oddly beautiful.

However, I did find this novel a little overstuffed. Some scenes feel redundant or pointlessly dragged out. Tartt introduces a number of characters that hover on the periphery, never developing into more than caricatures. An obvious example is the adult Theo's fiancé, who's reminiscent of David Copperfield's irritating "child wife", but is such an uninteresting sketch that she could have been edited down, if not out. The same goes for Theo's main love interest, who is important to one or two chapters, but is so limited in her actual presence on the page, I wondered why Tartt bothered.

But, even with the editing issues, when Tartt is on, she can be dazzling. I loved the Las Vegas sequence, in which we meet Boris, as well as the sequence in which an older Theo digs himself into a moral hole while trying to save Hobie's furniture store from financial ruin, and runs afoul of a shady collector. Then there's the harrowing finale in Amsterdam, which follows the reveal of a surprising secret and ties up most of the novel's major plot and and thematic threads. While the Goldfinch does have some problems, for me, its strengths outshone them. I'd happily recommend this one to fans of Jonathan Safran Foer or Marisha Pessl.

Audiobook narrator David Pittu can be commended for his attention to the emotion of the prose and his range of male accents, though he sometimes overacts, particularly with his nasally female voices. 3.5 stars.